A small chocolate business can make a healthy margin on each piece, but the margin depends on what you make. In the example below, a 70 g bar made from couverture costs $2.15 and wholesales at $5.25, a 59% margin, while a box of nine bonbons costs $6.69, mostly hand labor, and wholesales at $14, about 52%. What decides the year is the calendar: a large share of a chocolatier's sales can land around Valentine's Day and the December holidays, so the business that plans its couverture, packaging and kitchen hours for those weeks keeps the margin it priced. Below are both products costed line by line, what tempering loss does, a seasonal month against a quiet one, and where the margin leaks.
The short version
- Cost each product from the couverture and fillings you used, allowing for tempering loss.
- Bars are mostly chocolate and packaging; bonbons are mostly labor.
- Wholesale at about cost ÷ 0.70 or better; retail at what a shop would charge.
- Seasonal weeks decide the year: plan couverture, packaging and hours ahead.
- Shelf life matters: bars keep for months; fresh-ganache bonbons keep for weeks.
- TaroStack costs every batch and plans the rush around shelf life and kitchen hours. More below.
A bar, costed
Windward Roots, the made-up taro business I use in these examples, adds a 70% dark bar with macadamia and sea salt, made from couverture at $14 a kilo:
| Per 70 g bar | Cost |
|---|---|
| Couverture, 65 g, plus 5% lost in tempering and molding | $0.96 |
| Macadamia pieces, 5 g at $22 a kg | $0.11 |
| Foil, wrapper and sleeve | $0.45 |
| Molding and wrapping, 60 bars an hour at $20 | $0.33 |
| Overhead | $0.30 |
| Cost per bar | $2.15 |
Tempering, molding and the chocolate left in the machine and on the tools mean you use more couverture than ends up in bars. Divide for it: 65 g ÷ 0.95 is about 68 g of couverture per bar. Weigh what goes into the tempering machine and what comes out as bars for a few batches to find your own figure.
A box of bonbons, costed
| Per 9-piece box | Cost |
|---|---|
| Couverture, cream, butter, flavors, with 8% loss | $2.02 |
| Colored cocoa butter for decoration | $0.20 |
| Box, insert and sleeve | $1.40 |
| Labor: 2 people, 8 hours, 120 boxes, at $20 | $2.67 |
| Overhead | $0.40 |
| Cost per box | $6.69 |
The ingredients are less than a third of the cost. Shell molding, filling, capping and decorating are hand work, so the real lever on bonbon margin is how many boxes a day the kitchen turns out, not the price of cream.
Margins, wholesale and retail
| Bar, wholesale | Bar, retail | Box, wholesale | Box, retail | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Price | $5.25 | $9.00 | $14.00 | $24.00 |
| Cost | $2.15 | $2.15 | $6.69 | $6.69 |
| Margin | $3.10 (59.0%) | $6.85 (76.1%) | $7.31 (52.2%) | $17.31 (72.1%) |
A shop selling the bar at $5.25 ÷ 0.60 lands near $8.75, and the box near $23.33, so your own prices of $9 and $24 sit fairly beside them. How the 0.60 works is in how to price handmade items for wholesale, and why to price on margin in markup vs margin.
A seasonal month against a quiet one
| A quiet month | February | |
|---|---|---|
| Bars, wholesale at $3.10 | 400 → $1,240 | 900 → $2,790 |
| Bars, retail at $6.85 | 150 → $1,028 | 300 → $2,055 |
| Boxes, wholesale at $7.31 | 60 → $439 | 400 → $2,924 |
| Boxes, retail at $17.31 | 40 → $692 | 250 → $4,328 |
| Contribution | $3,399 | $12,097 |
February's 650 boxes take more than five eight-hour days of bonbon work for two people, on top of the bars, and the boxes, sleeves and couverture have to be ordered weeks before. Fresh-ganache bonbons often keep only a few weeks, so they can't be made in December for February; bars, which keep for months, can be made ahead in January's quiet weeks. That split, make ahead what keeps and make fresh what doesn't, is most of seasonal planning. How to size a week against the kitchen is in how to calculate production capacity.
Where the margin leaks
| Leak | What it costs |
|---|---|
| Tempering loss creeping from 5% to 10% | About 5 cents a bar, more on bonbons |
| Bonbons that expire after the holiday | Their full cost, labor included |
| Boxes ordered at the last minute, with rush freight | The freight, and sometimes the season |
| Couverture price rises not passed on | Every bar, until the price list changes |
| Broken and misshapen pieces sold as seconds | The difference from full price |
The expired bonbons are the costly one, because a box carries $2.67 of labor that's gone either way. How to see which products are slipping before the year-end numbers is in food cost variance formula.
Where this stops working
A costing sheet built in summer is wrong by February. Couverture went up, the new sleeves cost more, the tempering machine was run fuller and lost less, and nobody knows what a box costs this week. Meanwhile the seasonal plan lives in someone's head: how many bars to make ahead, when to order boxes, how many bonbons the cream on hand will cover. After the rush, a shelf of unsold fresh bonbons is the first sign that the plan was a guess.
How TaroStack does it
TaroStack keeps the cost of every bar and box true and plans the rush around what keeps and what doesn't.
Every batch is costed from what you used. Couverture, cream, nuts and packaging come in at what you paid, with freight spread across the delivery. Recipes contain sub-recipes, like a ganache used in several bonbons, and units convert: buy couverture by the 10 kg bag, use it by the gram. Record a batch with what came out good and TaroStack costs it from the lots it used, against what the recipe says it should cost, so tempering loss shows up in every batch's cost. Recipe truth, from your own batch history, shows whether a recipe yields what it claims.
The rush is planned, shelf life first. Planning turns your shops' orders and your own sales history into what to make and buy, and when, against your kitchen's hours, and it's shelf-life aware: its exceptions say in plain words what will expire before it's sold. So bars get made ahead, bonbons get made fresh, and the box order goes in with the supplier's lead time.
And the season is watched. Every lot carries its dates, oldest goes first everywhere stock is picked, and TaroStack forecasts what will expire unsold and what it'll cost, while there's time for a post-holiday sale. A price-creep report per supplier shows couverture rising, and margins are reported per product on what each one actually cost.
| The job | Summer costing sheet | In TaroStack |
|---|---|---|
| Cost of a box this week | Last summer's number | This batch's actual cost |
| Tempering loss | Assumed | In every batch's cost |
| February plan | In someone's head | Planning from orders and history, shelf-life aware |
| Unsold bonbons | Found after the holiday | Forecast before, with the cost |
Lots, best-by dates and the expiry forecast are on every plan, from $49 a month; recipes, batch costs, planning and recipe truth are on Standard at $99. The first 30 days are free, with no credit card. If you'd like a hand setting up, ask, and we'll do it with you.